


Touch

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Illnesses, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6966184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is called for in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

He woke to darkness and pain. A great chill took him, ice ran through him from his marrow, from the tangle of his gut to his kidneys, and to the base of his skull, one and then another, inescapable. The blankets covered him, but did little against the rigor that shook him; their comfort was paltry yet he clutched them to him. Had he taken the needle again? Had he never left the locked room where Mary was his warden and he longed for her while he wished to force her from him? It hurt to think and still the darkness pressed on him. The window seemed smaller, further away-- had the moon been extinguished? He felt the urge to call for help, for someone, but the words and sound would not join, partners missing each other in the dance. He cried out, the pain in his head sharp now, then a great throbbing; the word for dagger eluded him, even knife, stone, hurt, but that was the meaning. The space of a breath was brief and endless.

He felt a soft hand at his cheek, softer still stroking his forehead, brushing back the curls. The touch was light but not hesitant. The relief was in sensation but also the clarity that someone was beside him in this utter night. He moved in the bed, too quickly, as if he might throw off the pain, and felt it redoubled; it pulled a lower cry from him, the beginning of desperation.

“Hush, Jedediah. Be still a moment and I will get you some medicine,” he heard and after a moment, the calm the voice had given him allowed him to construct a thought—it was Mary with him in the night. Through the pain and cold that still bit into him, he became slightly more aware. Memory returned to him in fragments, not broken like glass, but strewn about like a rose’s dropped petals. He had gone up early, the men settled in their beds. He had felt uneasy and fatigued, unable to concentrate on his letter from Jean-Claude. He remembered lying down, his cravat loosened, and later, drawing the covers over himself. Then nothing till he’d awakened, pain run amok through him. His eyes were heavy. Mary had lit the candle in the lantern now and the light flickered a bit before it cast a steady yellow glow in an uneven radius.

Mary was back beside him now and put her hand behind his head to help him lift it to drink. The cup was bitter but he drank without complaint. Her hand was warm and strong against the back of his neck.

“That’s good. Now, try this,” Mary said and he made the effort though it seemed like a glacier scraped across him, to lift his head again a little. The cup held only water, cool and sweet. Mary had bent over to help him drink and he saw how her hair had come loose at the front, tendrils at her brow. One longer curl dangled free and he reached towards it, felt its silk against his fingers.

“Beautiful,” he said, her face ivory and gold in the candlelight. Her dark eyes were concerned, their gaze more tender than he could recall seeing when she treated the men on the wards.

“Just you hush. You need to rest now and let the medicine work,” she replied. He could tell she was not bothered but was still worried. About him? He thought she would leave the room then, but instead she straightened the covers over him, set the cup on the table beside the bed, then sat down again. He realized she had drawn the armchair from its regular place and put it right beside the bed; his eyes were still cloudy and it hurt even to look but he saw she was tucked into the corner of the chair where the wing of the back flared out. There was something dark covering her that he couldn’t quite make out against the light fabric of her blouse; it set off her face like a cameo.

“Mary,” he began, then closed his eyes, wanting to ask questions, not sure he wanted the answers. He knew he did not want what was right, for her to leave. He had not even thought what word he would say after her name before she ran a damp cloth across his brow, wet it again and then held it against his neck, one hand unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt to reveal his throat, the left side of his clavicle. This was not how she nursed the men downstairs, even if they raged with fever. She had left that impersonal decorum behind and cared for him as a wife, her touch entirely intimate. He half expected to open his eyes and see her in her nightdress, the muslin billowing around her, her body more immediate, more obvious than in her fitted bodice, sleeves tight to wrist. Would her curls be in one thick braid that swung over her shoulder, the ribbon that tied it teasing his skin?

“Is that better? I think the willow-bark should start to help soon, you did well to get it all down,” she said, having anticipated a need he hadn’t recognized yet, but still he had to gather himself to ask her.

“Mary, why did you come?” he got out. He was truly only mildly curious; the relief of having her in his room, her hands upon him, was so great that his usual inquisitive nature was subdued, submerged perhaps like the Nile overflowing the Delta. The situation called for the question though, he could not simply accept that she was there, a fairy called forth from the wish of his heart.

“I heard you, while I was getting ready for bed. You were… you were calling for me, so I came. And then I saw you were very ill, so I ran to get the medicine and came back as soon as I could. You hardly knew I was here, your fever was very high. I thought if you did not awaken soon, I would have to get some orderlies to help me get you into a tub of water to cool you,” she explained. Her words were simple and she did not elaborate. What else had he said? 

“I called you?” he asked. She offered him the cup of water again and he swallowed some; his throat felt sore, it was work to get the water down.

“You only called twice, Jedediah, you only called, ‘Mary, please,’ but I knew you must need me, so I came. It was good you called, you are so sick,” she replied. He wondered at what it had sounded like, his voice calling for her in the night, without her title, only shadows filling the space from his room to hers. He knew how he had felt when he’d woken in the dark, scared as he hadn’t been since he was a young child, wanting someone, no, wanting only Mary herself and so much.

“You must go now. To be here, in the night, it means—you must go,” he managed. It cost him, the toll the lonely dark hours would take, the drag on his muscles as he raised himself up part-way to say it, the breath from his lungs his ribs pressed so hard against, the bone iron, his sternum a mace. She didn’t bother to respond at first and only put her arms around him, her breasts to his back; she pulled him to a reclining position, pillows hurriedly braced behind him. Time seemed molten, his fever catching it and it streamed quick, then slow, silver in a crucible. She was still behind him and he arched his neck, bare where the linen shirt gaped, turned his face to press it against the curve her shoulder made into her own throat. He sighed at the contact and didn’t hear her gasp, but he felt the moment when she pressed back against him, made his movement into nestling, made his intention her own.

“Jedediah Foster, you hush. You are ill, very ill, and you need to be tended. I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly, the firmness supposed to obscure her worry, the affection she was showing him, even the little bit of amusement mixed in at his attempt to command her when she was certain she knew better.

“It isn’t done, you are not my wife,” he replied, the few words the distillation of his anger and grief. He felt heat rise in him suddenly and longed to throw the covers off but his hands were heavy and his wrists ached as if they would break. The cool cloth was on him then, before he could say anything else.

“It’s only the fever, you know that,” she said first. “Of course I will stay. I am the Head Nurse of this hospital and I am only doing what I ought, there is no one to say anything else. I will have Dr. Summers or Dr. McBurney look in on you in the morning and all will know how ill you are,” she paused. She saw he was not satisfied. “Jedediah, I am a widow, not a young virgin, and I have already become a nurse, I go among strange men every day. You needn’t worry so much at what people will say. The only people I care about already know my motives, trust me to do what is right. Don’t trouble yourself,” she finished. She put her hand then against his cheek and stroked with her fingertips, then reached back to cup his scalp through his unruly curls, an unmistakeable caress. 

“It is so late though, you need to sleep,” he tried one last time. She pulled the blankets up against and tugged at the pillows behind him for a minute; she did something he didn’t see and then he was much more comfortable, felt the dozy ease of sleep begin to come for him.

“I would not sleep at all, knowing you were here, alone and ill. You rest now and I will be here. This chair is much more comfortable the oak floor that was my bed the first month I was here, I shall do well,” she said, the smile in her voice. He saw she arranged herself back in the chair, wrapped her woolen shawl around herself. She leaned her head against the upholstered wing, watching him with her soft, dark eyes, making a little hum under her breath as sleep took him, away from the dulled pain that still gripped him tightly.

He wasn’t sure if he heard her or dreamt it, her voice so close, whispering, “That’s right, sleep now, my dearest,” but he did as she said, the night around him tempered by the candle’s light, the faintest scent of rose-water she’d left with every touch.

**Author's Note:**

> This was in response to the "touch" prompt-- I had already wanted to write a little story about Jed being sick and Mary taking care of him but not associated directly with his withdrawal and I thought it would fit in well with this prompt, since so much of caring for a sick person has to do with physical comfort. Willow-bark is basically proto-aspirin. I'm imaging Jed has the flu with lots of muscle aches, chills & fever. Rigor is the officially medical word for chills, BTW :)


End file.
